How does exclusive soft surface running positively or negatively affect marathon performance?

Salazar swears by soft surfaces. The E. Africans rarely ever run on roads. I think doing a long run on the roads with everything else on dirt is a good plan. I think you do need to get some of the stress of the roads on your legs to keep bones and tendons strong.

Grass improves speed and also comfortness and can be a way to settle into a rhythm. If you think a 1 mile grass loop is difficult, try doing a 25 loops to a mile grass loop(as I do).

One should avoid soft surfaces at all costs. A soft runner soft surfaces make.

Tried this, it works. wrote:

Grass improves speed and also comfortness and can be a way to settle into a rhythm. If you think a 1 mile grass loop is difficult, try doing a 25 loops to a mile grass loop(as I do).

25 laps to the mile?! Are you running loops in your yard? I feel like all that turning would be hell on your joints, no? Man, that must take some serious mental fortitude. Although, I've noticed that after the first few miles I can just settle into a nice rhythm, shut the brain off for the most part and cruise. It's kind of nice not having to worry about traffic lights, cars, bikes, etc.

Soft surface is great. Too much pavement makes you feel beat up. I do my long runs on crushed gravel along a bike trail. Whenever there is a section that I have to go on pavement it feels horrible after all that softness. Sometimes before track workouts ill warmup on pavement to prepare for the track surface.

Precious Roy wrote:

Salazar swears by soft surfaces. The E. Africans rarely ever run on roads. I think doing a long run on the roads with everything else on dirt is a good plan. I think you do need to get some of the stress of the roads on your legs to keep bones and tendons strong.

Intuitively I agree although to me it is a mental thing. All the pounding on pavement is something I have to get mentally ready for.

I found that my legs seemed to go dead in the late stages of long road races when I did most of my training on soft surfaces. But unlike a lot of people, running on hard surfaces seemed to agree with me more than running on soft surfaces.

For those of us from New England, I remember traveling and running races on Concrete in places like Chicago and Dallas. The pain after those efforts was almost unbearable. I disagree that soft surfaces build speed. I think basic physiology would tell us the reverse is true.

It depends on the "soft surface."

Grass is overrated as a running surface. I think it's as bad as any hard surface, because it's unstable.

Bark dust is even worse.

Dirt is fine. Nothing wrong with concrete either if your form is good. Gravel's good. Mud is worthless.

Bad Wigins is wrong. Just because grass is unstable does not make it overrated. It actually strengthens your feet and provides good "resistance" that makes the road feel fast and smooth when you transition. I got PR's after doing 90% of my training on a 1.5 mile loop on a golf course here in Arkansas. Lots of laps, but also lots of control of pace. The road and track are a piece of cake after training on grass, with just enough of hard surfaces to get a feel.

I have done 5 marathons. For the first 3 I did my long runs on a soft dirt surface. My legs went dead in the final few miles.

For the next 2 marathons, I did my long runs on the road and had more pop in my legs in the late miles.

I still did some running on soft surfaces but they were my midweek runs of 7-10 miles.

I think the running on the road for the long runs prepares your legs better for the final miles.

I once bought a new car. Well, it wasn't new, but I just bought it, so it felt new. One door panel had been replaced, so my white car had a red door. It looked like a giant Tylenol.

As I pulled into my driveway, I saw a giant goat in the garage. I thought, "Good Grannies alive, what's that goat doing in here?" It was then that my wife stepped out of the front door and asked what was going on. I said, "There's a goat in the garage!" "A goat in the garage?" "Yeah, a goat in the garage."

Wouldn't you know it, our cat came out of the kitty door. He started going, "Meow, meow, meow!" All crazy like. Then the goat turned its attention to the cat food dish and started chowing down like a horse (well, more like a goat, really). "Meow!" Cat's still going crazy.

I thought about the situation, and decided then and there that if I ever want to PR in the marathon again, I've GOT to increase my mileage!

Grass is good wrote:

Bad Wigins is wrong. Just because grass is unstable does not make it overrated. It actually strengthens your feet and provides good "resistance" that makes the road feel fast and smooth when you transition. I got PR's after doing 90% of my training on a 1.5 mile loop on a golf course here in Arkansas. Lots of laps, but also lots of control of pace. The road and track are a piece of cake after training on grass, with just enough of hard surfaces to get a feel.

Just because you overrate grass like everyone else doesn't mean I'm wrong.

Grass interferes with normal pronation and supination and turns the ankles, which undoes any benefit of it being "soft."

Some people think grass is a natural running surface. They think nature has a lawn mower. Real grass is hard to walk through, let alone run on.

Well, when I say grass surfaces that essentially means dirt. Here in central Texas where it hasn't rained a drop in 3 months the grass is short, sparse and mostly dead. That leaves me with essentially a 1 mile dirt loop. I would probably agree with you if this were lush thick grass - I could see that messing with your foot's perception of landing. Lush grass doesn't exist here.

I think if you want to perform on the roads, then you have to do at least some training on the roads. Maybe just your long runs, I don't know. I suspect you will have to experiment a bit to figure out how much it affects you at the end of a long race like a marathon.

Personal experience tells me that training on the roads is not optimal for racing on trails. Likewise, a friend of mine who runs almost exclusively on trails almost always underpeforms on the roads compared to trail races.

If your target marathon has hills, your quads may not be prepared unless you do a good amount of downhill running on pavement at a good clip.

There is significant individual variation on this point. If you weigh 120 pounds, you might get away with less specific quad preparation. Or if you are naturally a runner with a strong muscular base for downhill running, again, you might get away with less specific preparation.

Also, there is a good deal of variation in non-pavement surfaces. Not all are really "soft." A wide open downhill hard dirt road can pretty closely approximate the effect of running downhill on pavement.

quandary wrote:

If your target marathon has hills, your quads may not be prepared unless you do a good amount of downhill running on pavement at a good clip.

There is significant individual variation on this point. If you weigh 120 pounds, you might get away with less specific quad preparation. Or if you are naturally a runner with a strong muscular base for downhill running, again, you might get away with less specific preparation.

Also, there is a good deal of variation in non-pavement surfaces. Not all are really "soft." A wide open downhill hard dirt road can pretty closely approximate the effect of running downhill on pavement.

This is actually my concern. The knee flared up after a few sessions of hill repeats with fast striding downhill on asphalt, which is why I went to soft surfaces for the past few weeks. I think I may have chose too steep of a hill for those downhill repeats. The knee feels good now. The marathon isn't all that hilly and I'm 6'3'' / 155 lbs so perhaps I can get away with this? I'm thinking of doing every other long run from here on in on the roads and see how it goes.

running on soft surfaces may or may not cause more pain. the softer surface means your muscles around your tedons are working harder. the adaptation is slow. you may feel more "tired" also because it takes more energy to push off as well. remember to run the same as if you were running on the track.

I can't speak to your injury but on the Farm our long runs were almost exclusively on trails. Tempo runs were on a bike path or roads and we worked out on the Stanford track. Most mileage / training days were in trails in the hills. Morning runs were on roads from the house as it didn't make sense to drive 30 min and 30 min back for a 5-6 miler.